Board discusses auction of former middle school

Tuesday

A majority of Ames Community School Board members favor auctioning the former middle school property.

A majority of Ames Community School Board members favor auctioning the former middle school property.

The board met Monday in an informational meeting to discuss various offers on the 48.5-acre property on State Avenue. No decisions were made, but five of the seven board members indicated they favored holding an auction for what has become a hot property.

Three firms have made multi-million dollar offers on the former school, the highest coming from Carter USA of Atlanta, which has offered $3 million for the entire property, or $2 million for only the middle and northern portions. Breckenridge Land Acquisition of Austin, Texas, has made multiple offers, the highest being $2.8 million to put up college student housing on all three parcels. It also has offered $1.3 million for the same parcels but would agree to build some single-family housing, which would be in accordance with current zoning laws.

Local developer Dickson Jensen has offered $2.7 million for just apartments and $1.2 million for single-family housing. All those offers were announced Oct. 22, and no new offers have been made since.

Rather than accepting one of the bids, a majority of the board indicated Monday it would like to move forward with an auction with a date and location to be determined.

Board member Teresa Simpson advocated for an auction and several times urged the board to move forward, citing the roughly $36,000 annually in maintenance and insurance the district spends to maintain the shuttered school building and grounds.

“I know we don’t like it when I use these words, and I’m not using them toward any member here, but we have a paralysis of analysis (by) entertaining everybody’s thoughts about what we should do, what we could do, how we should do this. It becomes almost a stalemate for us,” she said. “We have to move ahead.”

Board president Dan Woodin doesn’t think the board’s decisionmaking has been slow, noting it had completed sales on vacant property on Sixth Street and in Somerset earlier this year.

Woodin, as he did at last week’s meeting, recommended holding onto the southern portion of the former middle school property, giving future boards the opportunity to locate a new high school building there. Upgrading the current high school is the next big issue the board will address, but previous discussions focused solely on renovating at the current site on 20th Street. Building anew along State Avenue would require the district to purchase additional land from Iowa State University, but ISU has not indicated that it is willing to sell. Superintendent Tim Taylor suggested Monday that even with additional acres the site would be too small for a high school.

Board member Mike Espeset said recent investments in the high school, such as new turf on the football field, would be “difficult to walk away from.”

No other board member supported moving the high school south, and Simpson said the discussion was leading the board off track.

“All of a sudden we stop, and now we’re sitting here saying, ‘Gee, what should we do with the high school?’ Where does this come from?” Simpson said. “I disagree that it’s something that we need to save. … I think people put us in a position that we’re in right now to move forward and do what we need to do to get rid of this land that we have.”

Board members generally favored not involving the district in any potential re-zoning, leaving that to be settled between the buyer and the city. They also generally agreed not to place any restrictions on usage for the land.

Board member Luke Deardorff said there is risk in auctioning the property.

“We may get lower bids,” he said.

However, Deardorff thinks the property is worth more than the current offers and an auction could bring more money to the district.

The board will meet Monday, Nov. 5, and likely make a decision on the auction then.

Mike Malloy can be reached at (515) 663-6933 or mmalloy@amestrib.com.

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